Global movements mean global solidarity, even in Israel

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By Jacob Anikulapo, via Flickr.

A couple of weeks ago, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article of mine — some thoughts and suggestions for the Israeli social justice movement from the perspective of someone involved in Occupy Wall Street and connected to Israel and Palestine from afar. I received a lot of feedback from that letter, and it prompted constructive responses like Udi Pladott’s Haaretz op-ed. In that light, I want to sharpen the discussion that my earlier article began.

To be clear from the beginning: I think the occupation of the Palestinian territories and the reality facing oppressed groups inside Israel cannot be separated from issues of economic or social justice in Israel more broadly, and that those issues must be central to the movement for social justice in Israel. But actually, my individual stance is not the important part.

What’s important for Israelis to know is that so much of the feedback from my first article was about the need to place the struggle against the occupation and for Palestinian self-determination at the heart of the Israeli social justice movement. The feedback was a reflection of the fact that people engaged in struggles around the world hold the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be vital in the context of global justice more broadly, and that many members of our movements thinkthe Israeli social justice movement must stand up firmly against the occupation and for Palestinian self-determination. That is important. It needs to be written again and again — even from so far away, and even though Israelis have heard and written it themselves — because this is the global movement of which you are a part.

It’s complicated, but it’s also not. Sure, there are all sorts of nuances and complexities to the conflict, with so much history and trauma. But it’s also very simple, when you zoom out and really just get down to it. Ultimately, there is no excuse for occupation — never an excuse for innocent deaths, for house demolitions and ongoing settlement construction, for separated families and refugees, for generation after generation of children born into conditions that will yield only suffering and hatred. There is never a justification for a place like Hebron; and if you don’t believe me, you should go there and see for yourself.

We have to be consistent and principled. A call for social justice must be a fight for freedom for all, especially in solidarity with those bearing a disproportionate share of the injustice around us. The struggle for economic justice must be understood in the context of a global economy, and must include serious opposition to occupation and war everywhere as part of that system. The violence people experience at the hands of the elite, their politicians and their cops cannot be separated from the violence experienced by Palestinians under occupation or inside Israel, African refugees in Tel Aviv or any other marginalized group. We need the broad slogans that invite many to the streets — from “Ha am doresh tzedek chevrati!” to “We are the 99 percent!” — but we must also grapple with the nuances, the difficult implications, the different ways oppression follows us home depending on where we live.

There is no better day to start than today. I suppose I just learned this lesson recently myself. I thought my first op-ed in Haaretz could stick to broad suggestions for the movement in Israel — along with mentions of Hebron and the liberation of one being tied to the liberation of all — while leaving the task of writing more directly about the occupation for another article when the time was right. It was the same mistake that some in the Israeli movement are making by putting aside Palestinian concerns for the sake of expediency. The truth is, there will never be a perfect opportunity to deal with such difficult questions. You will either fill your broad, inviting slogans with real meaning, or they will soon lose their value. You will either confront these issues now, front and center, with the courage and determination you have already demonstrated and taught us, or you will end up with a tent that is big but ultimately empty. It won’t be easy, but as my Israeli aunt always says, “Ze ma yesh” — It is what it is. In fact, these rare moments of movement upsurges that we are so lucky to be alive for are the best opportunities to struggle with the people around us, to shift our consciousness and come to new understandings.

You are not alone. It matters what people in movements around the world think — both because a globalized economy and society means you can’t win anything meaningful just for yourselves, and because we are the ones who will stand with you when our movements become strong enough to truly open doorways to new worlds. People all across the globe continue to look to you in Israel for lessons and inspiration, but being part of a global movement has real implications. This is part of why Occupy Wall Street learned to draw the connections between the power and greed of the ruling elites on Wall Street and the violence they carry out in our name, whether abroad or at home. In a globalized world, we need a globalized movement.

The occupation is essential to the infrastructure of injustice in both Israel and Palestine. It must be confronted and dismantled by a movement of Israelis and Palestinians, supported by a global movement — not as a distant result of a struggle for freedom and equity, but as a fundamental prerequisite for that struggle. For many of us, that means taking responsibility for the institutions that claim to act on our behalf, whatever and wherever they are. But even more than that, it means standing with oppressed people, who must be the driving forces of movements for self-determination. It means being in real solidarity with all those countless millions around the world rising up to reclaim the possibilities of a free society. It means offering real resistance, with the understanding that elites never give up power voluntarily, and the knowledge that freedom is something won through struggle, not given as a gift. It means having the recognition that our liberation will either come about bound together in a crazy, tangled ball of human potential ready to finally burst, or it will not come at all.

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Yotam Marom is an organizer, activist, educator, musician, and writer based in New York City, and founder of the Wildfire Project. He is also founding member of the Organization for a Free Society, and his writing can be found at www.ForLouderDays.net.

6 comments

If the Palestinians take the same stance you insist Israel take, how long to reach a peaceful solution?
When the Palestinians lay down their weapons and elect out of office, their leaders sworn not to peace and economic growth, but to Israel’s annihilation, then a real discussion of peace and justice can be had. All the truly great social justice victories of the modern age – Indian independence, Civil Rights, Solidarnosk, The Orange Revolution, The Occupy Movement, the list is extensive – came from focused, organized, and determined sacrifice and commitment to peaceful resistance.
Palestinians have been the pawns of a long and subversive commitment to Israel’s annihilation and their suffering will increase with every violent act they or others take on their behalf. The Palestinian people have the power to bring their suffering to a swift end and that power is not in violence but in peace, not in resistance to Israel’s army but in resistance to the influence of Israel’s enemies.
Pointing the finger at Israel, laying the blame at Israel’s feet, ignoring every move Israel has made towards real peace, accomplishes only harm to the nation of Israel and as importantly, crushes the Palestinian people by stymieing their realization of self determination and empowerment. It is a sick and twisted co-dependence that is killing and maiming the innocent every day.
Justice will prevail when the people of Palestine realize it is within their power and decide to make it happen. When they decide they are no longer willing to be the pawns not only of Israel’s enemies but of those who find convenience in their cause to vent their antisemitism.

To compare Israel to the Apartheid regime of South Africa is absurd. And in fact if ever there was a modern example of conquest by the oppressed through peace, it is in South Africa. Blaming Israel and insisting that her actions alone provide the only solution to peace will continue to perpetuate the violence, the suffering, and the depravity of extremists on all sides. It is disingenuous and paradoxically serves only the cause of injustice.

One thing that might be important to recognize here is that the article is not directed at the Israeli state, but at the Israeli grassroots movement. Does that change the question at all? I think it does. People are capable of building solidarity in ways states cannot. They are capable of uniting their struggles against false divisions and against racism and against the tendency, on display in this comment, to lay the blame solely at the feet of one side or another.

Just as the Occupy movement can declare that U.S. military and economic policies does not represent the demonstrators, both Israelis and Palestinians can unite and denounce the atrocities inflicted on one another by those who claim to represent each. That, I think, is a far more promising way forward than to expect the hobbling pseudo-government of a crippled and impoverished and occupied society to take the moral high ground at gunpoint.

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Thanks for letting me know about this — I just added it to the “Pick Ups” feature between the post and the comments.

Have you noticed, in terms of the fact that “people engaged in struggles around the world hold the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be vital in the context of global justice more broadly”, how much outsized attention the Israel-Palestine issue gets among activists compared to other unjust situations around the world, and how much of the rhetoric around the issue isn’t centered on Palestinians’ rights to self-determination, but the supposed Jewish lack of legitimacy of self-determination?
As someone who supports freedom and renaissance for Palestinians and for Jews, I find it very hard to remain in an environment so saturated with “Pro-Palestinianism motivated by anti-semitism”, let’s call it, than intelligent, informed, empathic and non-racist support for Palestinian rights alongside Jewish rights.

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